Wednesday, March 20, 2013

1932 – PECORA COMMISSION HEARINGS BEGIN – INVESTIGATE CAUSE OF US DEPRESSION
The investigation was launched by a majority-Republican Senate, under the
Banking Committee's chairman, Senator Peter Norbeck. Hearings began on April
11, 1932, but were criticized by Democratic Party members and their supporters
as being little more than an attempt by the Republicans to appease the growing
demands of an angry American public suffering through the Great Depression. Two
chief counsels were fired for ineffectiveness, and a third resigned after the
committee refused to give him broad subpoena power. In January 1933, Ferdinand
Pecora, an assistant district attorney for New York County
was hired to write the final report. Discovering that the investigation was
incomplete, Pecora requested permission to hold an additional month of
hearings. His exposé of the National City Bank (now Citibank) made banner
headlines and caused the bank's president to resign. Democrats had won the
majority in the Senate, and the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged the
new Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher,
to let Pecora continue the probe. So actively did Pecora pursue the
investigation that his name became publicly identified with it, rather than the
committee's chairman. Pecora not only documented a litany of abuses, but also
paved the way for remedial legislation. The Securities Act of 1933, the
Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 — all
addressed abuses exposed by Pecora. It was only poetic justice when Roosevelt tapped him as a commissioner of the newborn
Securities and Exchange Commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission